If The Market Crashes, Who Owns Enough Stock To Even Care?

[FarCenter]

Since 81% of all stocks are owned by the top 10%, a stock market crash has little effect on the bottom 90% of Americans.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/if-the-market-crashes-who-owns-enough-stock-to-even-care-2011-8

[Uben]

1. So you want 10% more poor people?

HELL YEAH!

[Creideiki]

7. This post brought to you by the Strawman logical fallacy

[Harmony Blue]

2. I don't agree with that entirely

Because, if the banks continue to take it on the chin, everyone will be effected.

[elocs]

3. But millions of regular, hard working Americans have what little they have for retirement

in the stock market in one way or another. They care.

[MadHound]

4. Except for the ripple effect we will all feel,

Massive unemployment, a dive in our economy, a depression that will last for a long, long time.

People may own little or no stock, but in a capitalist society the collapse of a major economic institution like the stock market would bring the rest of the economy down with it. Or have we forgotten the Great Depression?

[still_one]

5. There are a lot of folks who have 401Ks, and it still is a lot of people who are NOT in the top 10%

[Harmony Blue]

6. Yeah those few who are employed with 401k's would

see their futures up in smoke.

[still_one]

16. A lot of people are working and will be hurt, along with pension funds etc.

[Dreamer Tatum]

8. "Who cares if that canary died? I wasn't going to EAT him, after all."

What a silly OP.

If the market crashes, it will be because of something that has far greater implications for all of us.

[Tom Rinaldo]

9. Flaw in logic

That's like saying "since the top 10% own 90% of America's wealth, if the dollar loses buying power that has little effect on the bottom 90% of Americans". The wealthy are the ones who can afford to lose half of their assets (or income). The poor are the ones who suffer if their assests (or income) drops 5%.

[DURHAM D]

10. Ignorance - it stinks.

[raouldukelives]

11. Think of how horrible it would be

The gears of industry would grind down slowly. Less deforestation, military equipment, child labor, pollution. People depend on the profits from the market and they will protect to the death the right to destroy the limited resources of our planet for a quick buck. It's one thing to be anti-war or anti-environmental destruction but it's bad planning not to profit from it. Think of the investors futures!

[Earth_First]

12. Send me a check for the balance of my 401(k) and IRA and I won't care right along with you...

Otherwise, while I may not have amassed a princely sum of millons/billions; I do care...

[LWolf]

13. I care.

Too many people have 401Ks and even state retirement systems invested in the market.

And my mom depends on the small dividends from her stock to supplement her SS.

Those stocks were bought by a relative who invested in the company she spent 50 years working for, a little at a time, beginning in the early 20th Century. She wasn't rich. She was working class. She worked to help keep her large family afloat during the depression, did not marry until her 40s, and continued working until her retirement. She bought savings bonds and invested in the company she worked for to build a fund for her retirement. She left the stock in trust for my mother, who took care of her in her declining years. In trust for 25 years. By the time my mom can sell the stock, she'll be in her late 80s. She has no control over what happens to the stock until then. The dividends aren't a lot, but they buy groceries. Without it, she'd have to depend on SS alone, and who feels secure about SS these days?

[dmallind]

14. ....except that 19% is a lot of retirement savings, and big pension funds are in the 81% nt

[firehorse]

15. Tea baggers have that same nihilistic attitutude of sense "I don't have anything", then

f*ck everyone, lets all crash to the bottom together and let all systems go to hell. This is the fantasy of someone who wants to level the playing field because they believe at that point they can survive better and climb to the top of the trash heap. They think they have superior survivor skills, that their cans of food and water stashed in the basement will sustain them years, and that their guns and ammo will allow them to finally be Clint Eastwood. The nihilists want their world reduced to chaos and destruction, because they falsely believe for once in their life, they can climb to the top of the trash heap and be king.

It's a bullshit fantasy.

I'm a low income person surviving one month at a time, and I don't want the world around me reduced to a chaos and destruction. There are better ways to have a revolution.